The lentil is commonly associated with the Indian dish dhal, flatulence and Neil the Hippy from the BBC comedy The Young Ones almost 30 years ago.

More recently though, the relatively cheap pulse has also emerged as one of the most lucrative crops to grow in Australia.

Many farmers, however, have not been able to cash in on the extraordinary prices in what has turned out to be a season of contrasts for the two main lentil regions.

On the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, lentil farmer Mark Schilling is beaming after a bumper harvest.

He says with yields averaging between two and three tonnes a hectare and prices at times reaching $950 a tonne, the small legume leaves his other crops for dust.

"It's always nice to sit on the harvester and drive up and back and think there's another $5,000," he said.

"I've got to admit it, I got off the header the other night and I was grinning from ear to ear."

While some of the legumes were knocked about by a last-minute heatwave, the region escaped the worst of it.

But across the border near Horsham, the home of Victoria's lentil industry, farmers were not as fortunate as some prime pulse-producing land was not even worth harvesting.

Pulse Australia estimates only 20 per cent of Victoria's crop was top grade quality compared to 80 per cent in South Australia.

Horsham grower and processor Peter Blair says it is a bitter blow as the season was shaping up to be the best in a decade.

"We've seen a one-in-100-year event which has brought us undone. To get 35, 38 degrees [Celsius] day after day, they just couldn't cope. The pods have just been cooked.

"It's frustrating when we've had such a poor run. It's been the decade of dry years and frost."

Global investment

The run of poor seasons has not put Alliance Grain Traders off investing in the local industry.

The publicly listed company, which is one of the biggest exporters of lentils in the world, this year opened a $5 million splitting facility in Horsham.

"If you look at the last 50 years of production, it's been a very consistent agricultural producing country and we believe strongly in the potential of rural South Australia and rural Victoria," president Murad Al-Katib said.

"It's the only reliable southern hemisphere production of these commodities, so it's a place to be."

Australia will produce around 143,000 tonnes of lentils this year and most will be exported to the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.